The present invention relates to an apparatus and a method for information processing, and a program, and particularly to an apparatus and a method for information processing, and a program that can save trouble of specifying playlists a plurality of times and reduce a possibility of reproduction of a musical piece that does not suit a mood.
It has recently become common to store musical piece data in an MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer-3) format or an ATRAC (Adaptive Transform Acoustic Coding) format on a storage medium such as a hard disk, an optical disk, a semiconductor memory or the like, and listen to music by reproducing the musical piece data on a player.
With progresses made in lowering prices and increasing capacities of these storage media, a very large amount of data can be stored on the storage media without a very high cost being required. For example, some portable type players including a hard disk can store musical piece data equivalent to a few thousand CDs (Compact Disks).
The advent of such players has changed a style of listening to music. Specifically, a style of listening to music after setting a CD or the like in a player each time a user listens to the music has been generally changed to a style of specifying a playlist for categorizing musical pieces into different albums, different artists, or different genres, for example, the playlist being created in advance, and listening to music registered in the playlist.
In addition to being reproduced in order from a start, musical pieces registered in such a playlist are reproduced randomly. Thereby the user can reproduce the musical pieces registered in the playlist continuously in various orders.
Patent Document 1 discloses techniques of generating a playlist indicating order of audio information suited to preferences of a user. Patent Document 2 discloses techniques of enabling random reproduction with reproduction frequency taken into consideration.
[Patent Document 1]
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-15666
[Patent Document 2]
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2003-30969
In random reproduction of musical pieces, however, the user himself/herself does not specify the musical pieces to be reproduced, of course, and therefore musical pieces that do not suit a mood of the user at the time of the random reproduction may be reproduced.
In order to reduce this possibility as much as possible, it is possible to register only musical pieces that the user himself/herself really likes in a playlist and give an instruction to randomly reproduce the musical pieces registered in the playlist. In this case, however, when a relatively small number of musical pieces are registered in the playlist, reproduction of all the musical pieces registered in the playlist is finished soon, and thus it is necessary to specify a next playlist.
On the other hand, when too many musical pieces are registered in the playlist so as to save trouble of specifying a next playlist, a probability of reproduction of musical pieces that do not suit a mood is naturally increased as in a case where all musical pieces stored on a hard disk are set as an object of random reproduction.
That is, when one playlist is created with a limited number of musical pieces, reproduction of musical pieces that do not suit a mood can be prevented, whereas trouble of specifying a next playlist is required. On the other hand, when one playlist having many musical pieces registered therein is created, the trouble of specifying a next playlist can be saved, whereas a possibility of reproduction of musical pieces that do not suit a mood is increased.